The other day I drove by the hotel where my mom and dad stayed years ago for my niece’s wedding. My gentle and loving father was showing the first severe signs of Alzheimer’s, and this was the last trip they took before he was no longer able to travel. . They’d booked a room at
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The Secret Handshake
The secret handshake or how I got an obstinate pain in the a** to follow the rules. . I once worked for a bank and part of my job was managing the wire department. Frequent customers could set a verbal passcode with customer service and then call wires in without coming in to the bank.
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You Are What You Eat
The other day I heard someone remark, “You are what you eat.” Since I was eavesdropping, I didn’t feel right asking, “Hey, are we talking only food, or can we include things like anger, disappointment, humor, weightlifting, books by Jodi Taylor or Netflix? . I’m now declaring, by the power invested in me by me,
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Driveway Follies
It rained last week and then sleeted and snowed. Then it snowed again and the temp dropped to 9 degrees. Net result was the mile gravel road down to our house was a luge run. . Three of the neighbor guys got together and spread gravel on the steepest parts of the hills and curves
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Weighty Wood Roach
When you live in the country, you live with the critters that invade your house. We have wolf spiders, Indiana wood roaches, no-see-ems, midges, biting flies, wasps, gnats, ants, etc. . If they’re inside, I take them outside. It’s a no-kill kind of house, at least from my point of view. Ken also takes out
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Holidays=Comatose=Our Relatives Did What??
Yesterday I was missing those holidays with my my dad’s family at my great aunts’ farm in Kentucky. There was no TV, no cell phones, no toys, no games. There was no running water and no indoor plumbing. . Water came from a farm pump on the back porch. The outhouse was in the chicken
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Michael Proposes
Let me introduce you to Michael Coleman. Ken and I never missed Chicago guitar bluesman Michael Coleman’s gigs. He’d been blues harmonica legend James Cotton’s band leader and played the kind of funky blues that had people on the dance floor after the first few bars of a song. . Michael lived for his booty
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Are We Really Like That?
Name some of your characteristics. Negative or positive, your choice. Are you smart, good-looking, terrible at relationships, bad at math, a great artist, a supermom, fat, feisty or a hundred other self-images? How did these characteristics get attached to you? Did you decide what you are? I bet you labeled yourself with input from your
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Revenge: It’s a Family Thing
My family on my dad’s side was a close knit, clannish bunch. They have roots going back so far in that one time my grandmother called people who came over on the Mayflower “late comers.” They were a tough bunch, hacking out an existence by hand on their farm. They never did have running water
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Am I Talking to Myself?
Have you picked up some pandemic habits you’re not sure you want? I talk to myself. Out loud. I consider, I argue, I vent, and I’m always surprised when people look at me strangely. “Oh, haha was I saying something?” Big mask covered eye smile. I was at the grocery store and started an intense
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Never Too Late to Be Schooled
Wanna be schooled by an entire group of women you’re leading? That’s what happened to me when I innocently asked my Starfish Mothers Sphere the following question, prompted by reading Brene Brown’s Rising Strong. . “Do you think people are doing the best they can?” . I was in the “hell no” camp. People can
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Absolutely Afraid of the Dark
By the time I was born, my parents were ready to get on with their lives. They went out a lot. It made me nervous and paranoid to be left alone in the suddenly big and echo-y house. We didn’t have an alarm system and we lived on a quiet, deserted street. Even with the
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